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Transmutation 5
Time Skip! Brutus took a little over 8 months to take Julie to the center of the kingdom, as far as safety was concerned. Brutus made a enough valuable ore to sell in the passing towns that when he arrived with Julie to a safe looking village, he was able to buy a house for her to live in. Brutus needed to find a way to get them back to their original world. Julie was able to buy cloth from a weaver in the village and make the cloth into useful items. The seamstress work would be a reliable income for Julie and she would not have to rely on Brutus. During the 8 months that they traveled together, Julie tried to get closer to Brutus but felt him always pushing her away, though it might have just been the bronze mask he constantly wore to hide the disfigured face. A few weeks into the journey, Julie had seen Brutus bathing and the curse had moved to his neck that he now kept hidden with a scarf she made, and a few months later his entire body was covered with the strange disfigurement. While traveling, Brutus learned of a new ore, dungeonite. Dungeonite came from dungeon walls and floors and was able to withstand the strongest magic known to man. Brutus was able to obtain it for his transmutation when he took a dungeon tour with Julie for the first 3 levels of a low level dungeon. The dungeon was set up like a haunted house on Halloween and luckily had exposed dungeonite on the walls. Brutus also learned of the fall of the Pender house. Apparently, Arthur Pender was using his youngest daughter's ability to force the church to give him a high position. After she was killed, she was not able to make God visit the bishops in their dreams and tell them to give the Pender family things. Though the eldest son was away when it happened, the manor caught fire and everyone in it died. Luckily for the servants they had a separate building that was fine, but the maids and workers were not so lucky. Micheal was mysteriously tending to the horses in the stable with Roscoe when the fire caught. However the most significant of all the events that occurred while he was traveling with Julie to a safe village was the invasion. Blaming the burning of the border city on the demon kingdom, the human kingdom invaded. Though the fire was put out after about 3/4 of the city was burnt down, it was unusable. Humans left it and demons soon took over. The border city was only a few miles from the royal city, and thus was a huge advantage for the demons to hold. The current border had many twist and turns where the humans were able to take land from the demons but in the center of it all was the huge chunk of land taken by the demons that stopped just beyond the royal city. The one good thing about the human-demon war was... the kingdom started searching for the 18 children who were summoned almost 3 months prior to the start of it. Though they had not found anyone, Julie was glad that the search was being taken upon by someone other than herself and Brutus, so if anyone was found she would surely hear about them being a war hero or something similar. With this, Brutus was able to leave the village and work towards his own goals. Neither himself or Julie would be answering the calls of the kingdom because of how they had thrown them out after a couple of days of hospitality. Brutus left the village and about 3 miles out he used his transmutation to make himself a dungeonite armor set and sword. The armor and sword were almost identical to the Brute's armor and Brute's sword. For the helmet, Brutus made the face covering sections a mask of mithril. It was whiter than the dungeonite, and completely resisted magic. On his right hip was the Tank-Buster, it had huge bullets like an anti-tank rifle and could have 6 at a time loaded into it. On his left hip was the Taxi-Driver, it fired smaller bullets and could hold 9. On his back was now the dungeonite sword, so he had no space for a quiver. Instead, on his belt at his side were two quivers that each held a thick dungeonite rod. A single dungeonite rod was worth over 10 steel rods in terms of mass, and the thick rod was 10 times the size of a regular one. Brutus would be able to put his hand on the dungeonite and pull out a cartridge or bullet to put into the guns at any moment. Brutus and Julie had skipped past as many population centers as they could, except when they ran out of food or wanted to get more information about world events. They had made great time getting to the center of the kingdom, so it was strange that someone traveling the opposite direction as them told them about the war. There must be communication ring objects in cities too, Brutus thought. Brutus' first destination was a town about 50 miles from the village he left Julie in. They did not stop in this town, but they did see it. Enter the town was no problem, and he wasn't even asked to take his mask off by the guard. On first part of the town was residential. Leaving this section, Brutus came to the business part. The inner most section of the town had 4 large mansions most likely for the nobles and lord of the town. The buildings were mostly one or two stories, and there were many stalls outside in circles where the road widened. "You look like a capable warrior, do you belong to any mercenary group?" Someone came up to Brutus from a crowd in the business section and asked him this. Brutus looked at them and saw they had iron armor over most of their body and a helmet that didn't cover very much of the face. On their waist was a sword and a crossbow. This was very different from Brutus' appearance with his single huge sword on his back, two items at his hips that could be mistaken for small crossbows, two quivers at his waist with stone cylinders in them, and full armor, thought it looked weak and thin. "If you are trying to recruit from among the citizens in the center of the kingdom, I must assume that you have a job that you were tasked with yet were unable to complete. Is that correct?" "Not at all! My party and I were headed to the dungeon just a few miles from here when they suddenly decided to join the war! Can you believe they would just leave me here alone while they went to fight demons?" "Well, what kind of dungeon is it?" "Oh, it's a really simple rodent dungeon, rank E at the most." Dungeons were ranked N, F, E, D, C, B, A, S, SS, and SSS. N was for a neutralized dungeon that no longer spawned monsters, and F through A were incrementally harder dungeons. S, SS, and SSS dungeons were ranked special because of the unique properties of the dungeon it'self. Some dungeons had monsters that could instantly kill people, making them A rank. Some dungeons were filled with water and had to be swam through, making them S rank. "You look like you could handle an E rank dungeon by yourself." "Ah, but it is not just for me. I am trying to retrieve the body of the son of a noble who is rumored to have died in the dungeon." "The chance that the body is not already gone is little to none. What do you really want to go into there for?" "That is just the thing. The noble hired us to search the dungeon for his son and report back to him with whatever we find." "And because your people don't feel like spending a week looking through the whole dungeon they just left?" "That's right! The noble already paid me 5,000 coins to search for his son, but my party took 4,500 coins for themselves and just left me!" "Fine, I will go into this dungeon, but I require 300 coins." It was a minuscule amount, only enough for two nights at an inn. "Alright, we will spend a day to clear the four floors and them split up and search for a day on each floor starting with the last." "Sounds like a plan." Brutus left the town with the man who he had still not learned his name. "By the way, my name is Brutus, what's yours?" "About time you asked, I am Roger Ellis, swordsman class." It took them about an hour to get to the dungeon, and outside of it was a camp already made. There were a man and a woman in the camp tending to a fire. At the appearance of Brutus and Roger, they both stood up and drew their swords at them. "Stay back, this dungeon is ours!" "Don't come any closer!" They both yelled forward as they swung their swords in little jabs. "Fear not fellow adventurers, we are simply here for a recovery mission, not to take any of the dungeon's loot." "You want to recover the loot?" "No, we want to recover the body of a young noble who might have been killed fighting in this dungeon." "There's no way a body would last even a day in the rodent dungeon, get out of here!" The two adventurer's looked at each other and Roger looked at Brutus. They did not collaborate, but Brutus was thinking if he should use the Taxi-Driver to injure the adventurers while Roger was thinking if he should drop his weapons and ask to be let in. "We really are just looking for the body of a young noble. Even if it is not found, my employer will understand when I tell him I searched every inch of the dungeon." "Well if you are just looking-" "You wait till our group leaves, then you can go in." "How long might it take for your group to come out?" "Any minute now." Roger turned to Brutus and spoke in a voice so that only he could hear. "It looks like they don't want to tell us how long it might actually take. The dungeon is only 4 floors, so I doubt it they will still be in there by tomorrow. Are you find waiting?" "Sure I can wait, but I think we could take them if we just attacked. "Hey! What are y'all whispering about?!" "We will wait for your party to come out them." "Over here Brutus, let's make our own camp." Roger sat down a little away from where they were just standing and started to gather sticks to make a fire with. It was not so much for them to have a fire but to make the adventurers think they were not being watched. "... and because the dungeon is so small I have a map of all 4 floors. Normally adventurers would only travel these paths, but we are going to do the whole thing." Roger was explaining their plans for the next day. The previous group of 6 would have been able to search quickly, but now the searching was going to be divided among the two people. As the search plan was being explained, 5 people came out from the dungeon. Those 5 people spoke with the 2 that waited near the entrance for a few minutes and then picked up their supplies and went off into the distance. They looked back every so often at Brutus and Roger as they walked away though, as if they wanted to ask them something, or to make sure they wouldn't follow them.